Chennai - Yercaud : Route Queries

This is a discussion on Chennai - Yercaud : Route Queries within Route / Travel Queries, part of the Travelogues category; A friend of mine has booked a decent resort at Yercaud and I am planning to drive from Besant Nagar. ...

A friend of mine has booked a decent resort at Yercaud and I am planning to drive from Besant Nagar. The trip is scheduled during republic day holidays.
I second what ampere has to say regarding NH till Krishnagiri, as the roads are in supreme condition after Ranjeet till Krishnagiri junction. I work at a bank at sriperumbudur and daily travel from Besant Nagar via Manapakkam, Poonamallee Bypass, Nazarathpet. The roads are not even from Porur signal as the entire signal is in a mess owing to the under construction ROB and further till Poonamallee reckless and senseless folks will be driving in a stupid manner. Not to forget the carelessness exhibited by MTC drivers. So to all those folks who are planning a short weekend gateway, please start early around 5 to 6 AM and you can cross first toll at Sriperumbudur in an hour or so and from Ranipet till Krishnagiri drive is breeze.

I did Vellore - Yercaud and back last week.
On the climb up, Google asked me to take a left well before Salem. A few km in and I slowly regretted this. The climb up was terrible roads - broken, narrow, no traffic, dry and isolated.
This is the route that google showed me from the turn-off:

These video clips will show a bit of how bad the roads were - some good scenery and sections though:

I am travelling to Yercaud from chennai by the 3rd week of August . I would like to know if the route other than Vellore is good interms of road conditions ?My starting point is Medavakkam and i would like to avoid Vandalur route due to the ongoing bridge construction. So please suggest the best route available interms of time and road condition. Also the weather condition in yercaud would help. Thanks in Advance